SIOUX FALLS, S.D. - Downtown Sioux Falls in its heyday was home
to seven movie theaters, but filmgoers since the early 1990s have
been heading to the malls to sit in front of a big screen.

Those longing for the old days will get their chance to go retro
next year with the long-awaited reopening of the State Theatre, a
circa-1926 vaudeville and silent movie house that for the past
decade has been undergoing a slow but steady multimillion-dollar
renovation.

"It's a landmark," said 91-year-old Sylvia Henkin, whose family
donated $500,000 to the project. "Every kid that had a dime would
go down there and see a cartoon or a movie, and they brought
first-class, first-run shows there."

Crews are working to transform the newly renamed Sylvia R.
Henkin State Theatre into a "historically preserved theater with
all the modern amenities," said executive director Stephen
Williamson.

While visitors will be sitting in an auditorium restored to the
crimson-and-gold Beaux-Arts look from 1926, they'll be looking at a
high-definition, digital projection surrounded by thundering
high-fidelity sound.

The facade's facelift is complete, the marquee illuminates South
Phillips Avenue each evening and the reconstructed lobby is ready
for concessionaires. Crews have upgraded the heating, air
conditioning and plumbing throughout the three-story concrete and
steel building, which is as structurally sound as a bomb
shelter.

The theater will return in 2013 with just the main level open,
seating about 400 people. The 350-seat balcony will likely open
sometime in 2014, and there's no target date for reconstruction of
the theater's original Mighty Wurlitzer organ, Williamson said.

A complete restoration of the detailed stenciling that adorns
the walls and ornamentation around the towering organ pipe chambers
will take more time. Much of the stenciling was either covered with
paint or drilled out to attach aesthetically displeasing acoustic
tile, but artists will have original photos from which to work.

"The stencil work alone will take years to redo," Williamson
said.

The State will screen first-run films during the summer and
holiday seasons, when blockbusters are typically released, but
focus on art house and indie films the rest of the year while
hosting an occasional small-venue concert.

Williams said the State has a relatively small stage, so it will
leave plays to Sioux Falls' other arts venues - the Orpheum Theatre
on the north end of Phillips Avenue and the city's main performing
arts center, the Washington Pavilion.

Such a historical centerpiece can anchor a small Midwestern
city's downtown, said Emily Beck, executive director of North
Dakota's Fargo Theatre, a sister cinema that opened in 1926 just 13
days after the State.

"I think it's incredibly important for the artistic identity of
a community to have a theater like this that they can call their
own - that isn't just some sort of big-box, corporate theater
showing the next `Twilight' film," Beck said.

Though the Fargo Theatre sports an Art Deco style that harkens
back to how it looked in 1937, it and the State share much in
common. Both were designed by St. Paul, Minn., architects Buechner
and Orth for the firm of Finkelstein and Ruben, which operated
nearly 90 theaters in North Dakota, South Dakota, Minnesota, and
Wisconsin.

The theaters' Wurlitzer organs, which in that era provided the
soundtrack and sound effects for silent films, are just one serial
number apart.

Fargo's downtown gem, however, was closed for just eight months
in the late 1990s while it underwent its $2.6 million
renovation.

Residents of Sioux Falls who were seeing businesses flee
downtown in favor of newer retail centers wondered if their
historic theater would ever reopen.

"Downtown Sioux Falls was dead - moribund - and rigor mortis had
set in," Henkin said. "The multiplexes came out to the malls and
that took the place. I'm sure television had a lot to do with it,
too."

After the State closed around 1990, the building was bought by
private owners who held onto it for about a decade. The Sioux Falls
Film Society bought the property in 2001 and sunk more than
$400,000 into the beginning stages of restoration.

"They put a new roof on it, which really saved the facility,"
said Stacy Newcomb-Weiland, board president of the nonprofit Sioux
Falls State Theatre Co.

The organization, which took over ownership in 2007, raised
enough money to fix the facade at a cost of $250,000, but that just
restored the structure as an historic building.

"They were looking at selling the building to a business that
was going to tear the theater part of it out," Newcomb-Weiland
said. "I decided to try to form a group of people to turn it into a
theater again."

Downtown's Phillips Avenue is once again a bustling strip, and
the nonprofit since 2007 has raised about $2.5 million, putting
about $1.5 million of it into reconstruction. The lobby's
completion last fall has helped donors see progress, which is
bringing in more donations.

Among the State's more interesting features is a heavy steel
stage door that sits on the back wall at railcar height. It once
allowed vaudeville acts to pull up by train, unload their stuff on
stage to perform and then load back up before heading to the next
town.

Another mysterious door on the lower level opens to a
cinder-blocked wall, but it once served as a gateway to a downtown
tunnel system. The tunnels allowed stars to sneak between their
hotels and the theater under the radar of fans and untouched by the
Upper Midwest's harsh winter weather.

An upstairs apartment that sits behind the balcony just under
the project room once housed the theater manager, but it will soon
be turned into a beer and wine lounge, Williamson said.

Henkin, who watched "Gone With the Wind" at the State, said she
can't wait to help out at the popcorn stand when the regal theater
makes its second debut.

"It was just criminal to see that thing closed," she said. "Now,
that is going to make the whole downtown come even more alive than
it was."

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